BAR PILOT

Tiki Weekend!

Try a Polynesian Potpourri

Posted by: Caterina Purves on Aug 05, 2010 at 02:00PM 0 Comments

Ben Adams will be one of the participating artists in the Atomic Tiki group show at Elroy Artspace.

Just in case you didn’t get enough tiki at last weekend’s Tiki Kon festivities, we’ve got a whole slew of Polynesian cultural quests for you, the dedicated island lover.

Start tonight at the opening reception of Elroy Artspace’s Atomic Tiki group exhibition. More than just an art show, Atomic Tiki offers a peak into the larger cultural phenomenon whose icons include grass skirts, wooden masks, risqué native pin-ups, and that whole dreamy tropical island motif that was especially popular in the post-war years. Elroy Artspace is usually open 10-2, Tuesday through Friday, but tonight they will be open during First Thursday, from 5-9 PM.

Tomorrow night, grab dinner after work at Big Kahuna in St. Johns. The menu features local Hawai’ian-style meats with rice and, if you get the entrée meal, two sides (pick from tropical fruit, chili, or Paniolo beans*). I recommend the Kahlua pig rice bowl, or the entrée if you’ve got a big appetite. It’s just rice and pulled pork, but with the BBQ mild sauce (my fave), it’s flavor heaven. Their sauces are award winners for a reason.

Once you’ve stuffed yourself with an adequate portion of local kine grinds**, head over to The Alibi on N Interstate for some quality tiki time. Here you’ll experience the vestiges, in all their gaudy glory, of the 50s tiki culture phenomena you learned about at Elroy Artspace. Think of it as cultural field research. Order yourself up a super-sweet tropical cocktail, and get down with one of the rowdiest karaoke crowds in town.

On Saturday, grab an early dinner at Noho’s Hawaiian Café. Get there at about 5pm—it’ll give you enough time to eat and enjoy before your next task. The portions at Noho’s are huge, truly Hawaiian-sized, so don’t be put off by the daunting double-digit pricing. Anything I could possibly recommend is going to be ono***, but if I were you, I’d order the teriyaki steak. In fact, maybe I’ll just see you there.

Head over to the Keller Auditorium after dinner for the 7:30 showing**** of South Pacific. A World War II-era romantic comedy drawn from Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific (1946), the musical’s setting is, naturally, an island in the South Pacific. The beachy set and retro costuming (vintage swimsuits, classic sailor garb) will make you feel right at home. That is, if your home was a Polynesian island in the 1940s. Musical highlights include Broadway hits “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Bali Ha’i,” “I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy” and “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair.” And, as a special bonus to all of us ladies, I’ve been told that the actor playing the lieutenant (younger lead male) is easy on the eyes.

If you’re not totally tiki’d out by this point (and I’m betting you will be—run time for South Pacific is three hours!), head over to the Thatch Tiki Bar. It’s far more low-key than The Alibi, and the kitsch is at a more manageable level. Grab a post-musical Mai Tai and let the ambient music carry you and all your worries away. Maybe tomorrow you’ll dig up your bathing suit and hit the beach at Sauvie’s Island. Yeah, that sounds peaceful.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a tiki teaser for later this month: Hot Tiki Hell, a modern burlesque show at the Whiskey Bar. Tiki burlesque? That’s all you need to know.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Weekend Plans, kitsch

Weekend Wonders

A night at the Crystal, a day at the parade, and a graceful pas de deux

Posted by: John Chandler on Jun 04, 2009 at 04:00PM 6 Comments

Get an eyeful of Escher at Portland Art Museum this weekend.

Courtesy of Portland Art Museum

What am I doing this weekend? Same thing I always do: Order up a half-dozen pazones and watch old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 till I slip into a cozy coma.

But that doesn’t mean you have to. In fact, it’s your civic duty to rise and shine on Saturday and plant yourself along SW Broadway (remember, no duct tape!) for the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. The fab floats, drum lines, marching bands, and assorted dignitaries waving from convertibles will get rolling at 10 a.m. sharp.

“But why aren’t you going to be there?” you may ask. “How come Bar Pilot isn’t part of the festivities, perhaps puttering across the Burnside Bridge on a float cunningly crafted to look like an enlarged liver?”

I see it’s time to share.

When I was a wee lad, my parents (bless them and keep them) made me attend each and every Rhododendron Festival Parade in Florence, Oregon, till I was old enough to escape and join the military. My twitchy brothers and I were forbidden to run off to the nearby carnival and have actual fun until the parade was absolutely over. This was a quaint, small-town (i.e., low-budget) affair: the floats, such as they were, consisted mainly of gas-guzzling Caddies and Lincolns transporting people I didn’t know down the main drag. Not so bad in itself, but the pace left much to be desired. The vehicles, drill teams, and community groups were spaced so far apart that every kid present believed the parade to be over at least thirty times before it actually wound up with the appearance of an anemic Santa Claus in the back of a jeep pelting the now-seething crowd with gumballs.

Look, all I wanted to do was go on the damn Scrambler a dozen or so times and stuff myself full of elephant ears! Is that too much to ask? Life is short, and I don’t care a fig about the local Rotarians chapter! I HATE PARADES!! LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!

OK, enough childhood trauma. On with the weekend itinerary.

FRIDAY: Sorry, the secret is out about howling country chanteuse Neko Case. No longer a figure of awkward cult adoration, the comely lass’s latest album, Middle Cyclone, made a pretty respectable dent in the charts, and she’s been turning up on the talk-show circuit. She’s a huge fan of Powell’s Books, so doing two nights at the Crystal Ballroom should enable her to expand her library. Whether she’s giving some skanky lover the big kiss-off, as on “Runnin’ Out of Fools,” or cooing a traditional number like “Wayfaring Stranger,” Case’s rafter-rattling voice is a pure, righteous instrument—and sweeter than Yoo-Hoo.

SATURDAY: After you’ve had your fill of the floral fest, hike over to Portland Art Museum for the opening of two exhibitions worth a lengthy look. Virtual Worlds: MC Escher and Paradox, will give museum mavens the chance to consider the world from the perspective(s) of the Dutch printmaker best known for his illusory globes and staircases that inspired much stoned dorm-room contemplation. And PNCA at 100 is a retrospective of works from thirty-two artists who either taught at or attended the Museum Art School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art). Feast your eyes on works by local notables including Louis Bunce, Jay Backstrand, and Sherrie Wolf.

SUNDAY: Fans of the terpsichorean arts should be out in force at Oregon Ballet Theatre’s final program of the 2008-09 season, Rush + Robbins, which includes a trio of works from legendary Broadway and Hollywood choreographer Jerome Robbins. There will also be a staging of Rush, an intimate and lovely dance from Christopher Wheeldon, a former student of Robbins.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Art, Events, Weekend Plans, music

A Little More MST3K

Cinematic Titanic makes waves this weekend.

Posted by: John Chandler on May 27, 2009 at 09:00AM 10 Comments

Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Cinematic Titanic, materializes in Portland this weekend.

Photo courtesy of The Glen Schwartz Company

OK, here’s my follow-up post about this weekend’s appearance at the Newmark Theatre by Joel Hodgson and his partners in crime from the late, great Mystery Science Theater 3000 TV show. Under their new moniker of Cinematic Titanic, Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl, and J. Elvis Weinstein will once again add some much-needed comic commentary to a pair of craptastic movies; a kung fu blaxploitation flick called East Meets Watts, and Danger on Tiki Island, a low-budget mad-scientist stinker from the Philippines.

In a geeky phone conversation with Hodgson, he told me that tickets for the two Portland shows were selling briskly. “We always seem to do well in cities known for bad weather,” he noted. Makes sense. The nine months out of the year we’re hunkered down with our TVs and Cheez-Its listening to the staccato of rain on the roof are the ideal time to review MST3K classics like Red Zone Cuba, The Day the Earth Froze, or Eegah!

Recalling the show’s humble origins at KTMA, a small TV station in Hopkins, Minnesota, Hodgson’s talent for set construction on a teensy budget came in handy (for those who don’t know, MST3K takes place on a spaceship with a wisecracking robot crew). “I was a big Dr. Who fan, and I figured I could make something at least that convincing out of stuff from the Goodwill. We bought everything that wasn’t clothes or sporting goods. Dish racks, Tupperware, all kinds of toys.”

His appreciation for the “cheesy movies” that became MST’s bread and butter (yikes, a double food metaphor!) came from his childhood in Wisconsin, the highlight of which was staying up late on Friday nights for the local monster movie program. “My world pretty much revolved around Friday night,” he admits. The young Hodgson was especially enthralled by the baffling fluctuation in quality of those Friday flicks. One week it could be a black-and-white Frankenstein film from Universal Studios, and the next week it might be some hippie-vampires-meet-the-Martians corn-fest from the late ’60s drive-in circuit.

Joel readily agrees with my assessment that the randomness of the films was a huge part of the experience. It’s why everyone digs the “shuffle play” function on their iPods—because the next song is always beyond your control. Sadly, this is an element of corporate culture that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Yes, we’ve got hundreds of cable channels, but do we really have more choices if Law & Order is on half of them? Like me, Joel misses the days when local programming made up a significant part of the TV schedule.

After Joel left Mystery Science Theater in 1993, he appeared as a recurring character on Judd Apatow’s much-loved Freaks and Geeks, served as a “magic consultant” on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and built gag gadgets for The Jimmy Kimmel Show. But he couldn’t resist the lure of Z-grade cinema, so he reassembled his troops last year for Cinematic Titanic. Eagle-eyed observers will notice that the robots, spaceship, and Tinker Toy sets are long gone, but the incisive patter remains intact. “Yeah, we kind of miss the ’bots and the jumpsuits sometimes,” he says. “But Cinematic Titanic gives us a chance to say what’s on our minds now and to show what we’re like now.”

And that is, a bunch of smart-aleck adults with the same élan for shredding bad movies that they’ve always had. “Trace Beaulieu had the best description for what we do," Hodgson says. "He said, The movies are Margaret Dumont—and we’re the Marx Brothers.”

Add a Comment »

Tags: Weekend Plans

Mystery Men

MST3K cast is coming to town for two nights of movie mayhem

Posted by: John Chandler on May 05, 2009 at 10:45AM 12 Comments

Mystery Science Theater fans rejoice! Cinematic Titanic is coming to Portland.

Photo courtesy the Glen Schwartz Company

Wow. Just wow.

This post is a little off my usual bar beat, but I just couldn’t sit on it any longer. Joel Hodgson and most of the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (pictured) are coming to town at the end of this month for two live shows at the Newmark Theatre.

This may rate a “ho hum” on your “wow” scale, but for me it’s like Zeus, Bob Dylan, and the Harlem Globetrotters dropping by my condo for Little Debbie cakes.

Hodgson’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran on Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel from 1988–1999, though Hodgson left the show in 1993. It was MST3K that introduced the concept of “riffing” on bad movies—essentially making snarky, off-the-wall comments throughout—thus making them infinitely more fun. And thanks to MST3K, the world came to know the wonder and majesty of really, really awful films that Hodgson and his co-horts rescued from some obscure Hollywood Dumpster. Now when you mention flicks like Mitchell, starring rotund tough guy Joe Don Baker, or Manos: Hands of Fate, starring … nobody you’ve ever heard of, a glimmer of joyful recognition will register on the face of 1 in 10 or so. Italian muscle-man movies, guy-in-rubber-suit epics from Japan, and excruciatingly bad drive-in fare from gloriously inept filmmakers like Ed Wood, Coleman Francis, and Al Adamson were all fair game for Hodgson and company’s rapid-fire razzberries.

I worshipped this show like a devout pilgrim, as did thousands of other die-hard fans (known as MSTies), and dutifully programmed my piece-of-crap Emerson VHS player every Saturday morning to record as many of its 199 episodes as I could. As a result, and as anyone who knows me will attest, my absolute dream job would be to sit in a dark theater hurling insults and epiphanies at Z-Grade horror and fantasy films. Hell, I’ve got over 40 years of experience!

Hodgson, and original cast members Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl, and Josh Weinstein -(also a writer for The Simpsons)- will be here under their new moniker, Cinematic Titanic, firing puns, pop culture references, and zesty zingers at two different movies May 29–30; the kung fu blaxploitation flick East Meets Watts, and a mad-scientist stinker from the Phillipines called Danger on Tiki Island. I doubt you’ll find much info on either film from Google, as they’ve probably been renamed a bunch of times.

Stay tuned for more details as I’m hoping to snag an interview with Hodgson some time this week. Tickets are available through the PCPA box office or Ticketmaster. Meanwhile, here’s a shout out to fellow MSTies everywhere.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Weekend Plans, music

What’s My Weekend?

All is not lost if the Blazers don’t go the distance

Posted by: John Chandler on Apr 30, 2009 at 09:00AM 2 Comments

Bill Plympton’s Idiots and Angels

Courtesy Bill Plympton

I don’t know about you, but my nerves are shot, my back is killing me, and I need about 10 uninterrupted hours of sleep accompanied by my recurring dream in which I lead my old high school football team to the Super Bowl. Yes, you heard me—the Super Bowl.

Speaking of sporting events and dreams, if the Trail Blazers find a way to drop the Rockets tonight, my weekend plans will revolve around Game 7 of the NBA playoffs. Friday night I’ll still be celebrating the Game 6 victory, and Saturday afternoon will be dedicated to laying in the necessary supplies for the evening’s game. If Safeway is out of malt liquor, pork rinds, and bean dip on Sunday, that will be my handiwork.

If for some reason (Cough! In–the–tank refs working on behalf of the “Big Market” team. Cough!) B-Roy and company are denied a Game 7. There’s still plenty to do this weekend … after a respectful period of mourning, of course.

Friday: Any excuse to walk around in a bathrobe is OK by me. KUFO’s Cort and Fatboy will be hosting an 11 pm screening of The Big Lebowski at the Bagdad Theater. But the ball starts rolling at Laurelhurst Park around 9, with the Cinco de Lebowski May Day March. Show up in your most fetching robe and take a hike with your fellow Lebowski achievers over to the Bagdad for a pre-function with White Russians (the McMenamins version are referred to as “Dudes”) and live music. It doesn’t say so, but I’m betting that folks decked out as Maude Lebowski, Walter Sobchek, or Jesus Quintana will be greeted warmly. Me? I’m a nihilist.
[Laurelhurst Park, 9 pm, free admission]

Saturday: Our fearless food blogger Mike Thelin speaks highly of the Portland Indie Wine Festival, a gathering that affords you the golden opportunity to mingle with the region’s best winemakers, sample their premium vino, and snack on munchies from Wildwood, Ten 01, Country Cat and more top-flight eateries. [Portland Wine Project, 2–6, $75]

Sunday: Cinephiles in search of a fix would do well to attend each and every session of the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst University that runs from May 1–10. Sunday at 7, join animation sensation Bill Plymption for a screening of his latest feature, Idiots and Angels (pictured), which includes tunes by Tom Waits and Pink Martini. Say, when is that scintillating combination going to cut an album together? [Marylhurst University, Villa Maria Building, 7 pm, $30]

Add a Comment »

Tags: Weekend Plans

Friday on My Mind

Stuff to do in the next 72 (hours)

Posted by: John Chandler on Mar 20, 2009 at 03:11PM 3 Comments

Drunken Prayer’s Miss Audra and Morgan Geer testify about temptation.

Photo courtesy Drunken Prayer

Normally, our weekend cultural roundup is the purview of man-about-town Bart Blasengame, but he’s currently “out on assignment” as we say in the journalism biz. We’re not exactly sure where he is at the moment, but it’s undoubtedly someplace chock full of danger and intrigue. Bart, if you don’t come back, dibs on your office.

Decisions, decisions. Tonight there are a pair of dynamite shows, and your preference my boil down to your drug of choice. At Crystal Ballroom, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, possibly the most dysfunctional band on the planet, will favor the crowd with its trademark maraca-shaking hallucinatory grooves. Watch as volatile front man Anton Newcombe loses his cool over something trivial and has a hissy fit with his bandmates. For further explanation, cast your peepers on the pop documentary Dig for more of his manic moments.

Over at the Doug Fir, local hicks Drunken Prayer salute the release of a new Live EP recorded with legendary Wipers and Napalm Beach drummer Sam Henry, called, …with Sam Henry. Drunken Prayer singer Morgan Geer is like a 21st-century Elmer Gantry—a righteous and spiritual man on Sunday, but Saturday nights are reserved for whiskey, women, and other unavoidable obligations.

If you can’t abide that twangin’ gee-tar, Saturday night sees former Count Basie trumpeter Byron Stirling sitting in with the Oregon Symphony. Stirling’s jazz cred is top-notch, having blown his horn with the bands of Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Bellson. “Soul of New Orleans” is the name of the show, and will feature Stirling paying tribute to some of the Big Easy’s best, including Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and Cab “Hidey-hidey-hidey-ho” Calloway.

But enough about you and your constant need for distraction! How about giving a little something back? Down at the World Trade Center, World Water Day fun and festivities will be going on all afternoon and into the evening capped by a performance from radiant songbird Stephanie Schneiderman, one-third of melodious local trio Dirty Martini. All of the cash you cough up at this hydro-happening will go to bringing H20 to drought-stricken communities in West Africa. So c’mon already! Those wells ain’t gonna dig themselves.

Oh, and Portland Farmers Market opens this Saturday at the PSU Park Blocks. We sow the seed, nature grows the seed, it’s the circle of life, baby.

Without further ado, here’s the Easybeats with the best weekend anthem ever.

Add a Comment »

Tags: Weekend Plans, Live